Let us describe a country breakfast for the uninitiated. At the head of the table was a large salver, or japanned waiter, upon which was spread out various utensils of China-ware,—the only articles of plate being a sugar-dish and cream-pot. On the right of this salver stood a coffee and tea-urn, of some composition metal, resembling silver in appearance. At the other end of the table, under the skilful hands of the host, was a large steak, cut and sawed entirely through the sirloin of the beef. Half-way up the table, on either side, were dishes of broiled game, the intermediate spaces being filled up with various kinds of hot bread, biscuit and pancakes (as they are called in some parts of the north). This custom of eating hot bread at the morning and evening meal, is almost universal at the south. Immediately in the centre stood a pyramid of fresh-churned butter, with a silver butter-knife sticking into the various ornaments of vine-leaves and grapes with which it was stamped.
To this fare Chevillere found his friend Lamar doing the most ample justice, nor was his own keen appetite entirely destroyed by the temporary indisposition of the lady who had so much excited his curiosity and his sympathy. He could have congratulated himself on the little occurrence which had given him some claims to a farther acquaintance, and doubtless could have indulged in delightful reveries as to the fair and youthful stranger,—had not all his gay dreams been put to flight by the boisterous laughter and meager attempts at wit of the other travellers. As he returned towards the table, the one whom we have more particularly described elevated a glass, with a golden handle, to his large, full, and impudent eye. Chevillere returned the gaze until his look almost amounted to a deliberate stare. The "bloods" looked fierce, and exchanged pugnacious looks, but all chance of a collision was prevented by the return of the hostess. Notwithstanding the disagreeable qualities of most of the guests at the table, Chevillere found time to turn the little incident of the sudden indisposition and its probable cause several times in his own mind; and, as may be well imagined, his mental soliloquy resulted in no injurious imputation upon the youthful lady,—there was evidently no trait of affectation.
At length the meal was brought to a close,—not however, before the driver of the mail-coach had wound sundry impatient blasts upon his bugle,—general joy seemed to pervade every remaining countenance after the departure of the coxcombs. Both the northern and southern travellers, who were journeying northward, and who had breakfasted at the inn, were soon likewise plodding along at the usual rate of weary travellers by a private conveyance.
CHAPTER II.
The misery of the young and the beautiful is at all times infectious. Few young persons can withhold sympathy in such a case,—especially if the person thus afflicted be unmarried—of the other sex—and near one's own age.
Victor Chevillere could not expel from his imagination the image of the fair stranger. Again and again did he essay to join Lamar in his light and sprightly conversation, as they, on the day after the one recorded in the last chapter, pursued their journey along the noble turnpike between Fredericktown and Baltimore. The same profound revery would steal upon him, and abide until broken by the merry peals of Lamar's peculiarly loud and joyous laughter, at the new mood which seemed to have visited the former. When a young person first begins to experience these abstracted moods, there is nothing, perhaps, that sounds more harsh and startling to his senses, than the mirthful voice of his best friend. He looks up as one would naturally look at any unseemly or boisterous conduct at a funeral. He seems to gaze and wonder, for the first time, that all things and all men are jogging on at their usual gait. Thus were things moving upon the Fredericktown turnpike: Lamar riding forty or fifty paces in front, singing away the blue devils; Chevillere in the centre, moody and silent; and old Cato, stately as a statue on horseback, bringing up the rear.
From hearing sundry merry peals of laughter from Lamar's quarter, Chevillere was induced at length to forego his own society for a moment, to see what new subject his Quixotic friend had found for such unusual merriment; and a subject he had indeed found in the shape of a tall Kentuckian. The name of the stranger, it seems, was Montgomery Damon. He was six feet high, with broad shoulders, full, projecting chest, light hair and complexion, and a countenance that was upon the first blush an index to a mind full of quaint, rude, and wild humour. His dress was any thing but fashionable; he wore a large, two-story hat, with a bandana handkerchief hanging out in front, partly over his forehead, as if to protect it from the great weight of his castor. His coat and pantaloons were of home-made cotton and woollen jeans, and he carried in his hand a warlike riding-whip, loaded with lead, and mounted with silver, with which, now and then, he gave emphasis to his words, by an unexpected and sonorous crack.
Our Kentuckian was no quiet man; but, like most of his race, bold, talkative, and exceedingly democratic in all his notions; feeling as much pride in his occupation of drover, as if he had been a senator in Congress from his own "Kentuck," as he emphatically called it. He was a politician, too, inasmuch as he despised tories, as he called the federalists, approved of the late war, and had a most venomous hatred against Indians, of whatever tribe or nation. We shall break into their dialogue at the point at which Victor became a listener.
"How did it happen," said Lamar, "that you did not join the army either of the north or south, when your heart seems to have been so entirely with them?"